


What You're Worth

by fandomghostwriter



Series: TFR Dialogue Prompts [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 13:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13659840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomghostwriter/pseuds/fandomghostwriter
Summary: "I wanted to fly with you," Lance says in a hushed tone, his voice a deep treble. He hears Keith breathe. "Why did you save me like that? Do you really think you're that unworthy of life?""No," Keith answers. Lance can feel the fabric of his gloves against his skin, his voice under it. He can't tell where it's coming from. "I thought you were that worthy of it."TFR's dialogue prompt #36:"No, no, you do not want me navigating, I'll accidentally navigate us off a cliff."





	What You're Worth

**Author's Note:**

> I take requests! By the same name on Tumblr, fandomghostwriter.tumblr.com

"No, no, you do _not_ want me navigating, I'll accidentally navigate us off a cliff. A metaphorical space cliff."

Keith stared at Lance with narrowed eyes and an open mouth. The red warning lights flashing through the cockpit reflected off his skin in a way that made Keith's stomach churn more than the turbulent spacecraft.

"Lance. Galaxy Garrison hired you _as my navigator_."

"No, they hired me to stay out of your way."

Keith flipped the switch for the warning lights and sound, and very purposefully did not look at Lance, but at the way the surrounding atmosphere around their craft was burning with forced re-entry. "What the hell--"

"The last crew you had you nearly ejected out of your ship!"

"That was completely justified," Keith grunted, struggling with the controls. Nothing he had had any effect. "Lance, I need you to do your job so we can get out of here, I can't keep us from blowing up and do those calculations."

"Is Keith Kogane running from a fight?" Lance asked as the craft shook with a graze from a blast that burned up in the atmosphere.

"Priorities!" Keith yelled, beginning to feel the fire inside the cockpit.

Lance was pulling charts out from under his seat and struggling to get them into coherent order. "No one has warped to any coordinates during forced re-entry."

"Then congratulations, Lance, you're about to make history. I'm sure the girls will go crazy for it," Keith ground out. This is why having a crew didn't work for him. They were all idiotic and required explanations for what should be obvious, or was at least obvious to Keith, which was all that mattered. If everyone would just do what he said when he said it instead of needing to be convinced every time he gave an order they wouldn't be in situations like this, with the Galra shooting at them in an unknown quadrant of the galaxy and forcing them into the atmosphere of an undiscovered planet. It hadn't yet occurred to him that this was exactly what he did to his own commanding officers, at least the ones that hadn't earned his respect. Give him a captain like Takashi Shirogane and he was the perfect soldier.

Lance watched the grim determination on Keith's face for a moment too long. Eminent peril couldn't even keep him from that extra stolen second he always took. He began crunching the numbers. Pidge would be so much better at this, or Hunk. Why weren't they picked to be paired with Keith for this mission? Probably because neither of them could be bought off to just sit in the copilot seat and look pretty, though that job description was getting progressively less accurate, as they weren't three hours out of launch and Lance was doing calculations he could do but he'd never really understood.

With any luck they'd land in the ninety-nine percent of space that was empty, but judging by the kind of luck they'd been getting lately it seemed more likely he'd warp them directly into the gravity of a supernova. Burn baby burn.

_"Lance!"_

"Sorry, sorry!"

There was a piercing screech from the craft as something was ripped off the hull.

"Hope that wasn't important."

" _Everything is important Lance!_ "

Lance replied by shouting the coordinates he had to him and the requirements to get there. He was sure that at least half of what he said was wrong and they'd actually land a handful of lightyears away from where Lance predicted they would, but they weren't going for accuracy, they were going for non-Galra infested space that they could somehow reach while already in the gravity of a planet in a small galaxy jumper.

Keith punched in the information and was met with ERROR ERROR on the HUD of the craft. Keith screamed something Lance guessed was a curse but wasn't in any language he recognized.

"That won't work! We're not equipped for--"

He didn't finish, as the wing of their craft was ripped from the hull and they were sent into a spin, now inescapably plummeting to the planet's surface.

III

Lance owed Keith his life, and more apologies than he could supply within that lifetime.

Back at the Garrison, everyone was always silent in his presence. They'd see the cast on his leg, the scratches visible on his face, and they'd all know. He was the guy who had almost gotten the Garrison's best flyer killed. The stories circulating about what exactly had happened always painted him as the villain of the accident, if it could be defined as an accident. Lance always defensively thought that if they wanted to blame someone they should blame the Garrison for sending a crew of two into uncharted space, the best pilot in the garrison and a cargo pilot who always crashed the simulator and would put aside his code of honor to get paid to just go along for the ride.

That's what he began to tell Hunk when he'd come back, but Hunk had hushed him before he could finish. He hugged him and told him he didn't care what happened, what mattered is they both came home alive, he wouldn't judge him for what happened in between. Hunk knew Lance would torture himself enough, no matter the uncaring facade he cast for everyone else. Hunk knew people too well and Lance didn't deserve him as his best friend.

He knew it was his fault, and Hunk was right, Lance's own head tortured him enough for what had gone wrong without the help of the whispers among cadets and officers at the Garrison. He knew he shouldn't have taken the job, he was far too unqualified to go on a fighter class mission to scout out uncharted territory on the edge of Galra space. If he had been able to make that calculation on time and not made the simple mistake of using explorer class calculations for a fighter class craft they would have made it. If he hadn't been... distracted, he might have even caught his own mistake. He'd brought his numbers to Pidge and she'd seen the mistake immediately. Everything else was right, if that counted for anything.

Truthfully, all of it came down to this: he'd wanted the chance to fly with Keith Kogane, for whatever reason. He had many. He was ambitious but consistently underperformed, flying with Kogane would have given him a leg up even if he did none of the leg work. He was jealous of Kogane's abilities and despised that he didn't even know how good he had it with such a natural talent. He thought that flying with Kogane would bring him back a hero within his social plane, maybe even elevate him up a few rungs. Perhaps his romantic endeavors would go more favorably with a successful uncharted territory scouting mission under his cap.

He wanted to fly with Keith.

It took Lance half a year to recover. His side of the craft had been the one to lose the wing, so he got the worst of it. By all rights one of them should have ended up in a wheelchair. Would have served Lance right. Humbled him. Not that what had transpired hadn't humbled him enough. Where before he constantly made his presence known in any space he occupied, now he kept to the back, to the corners, counting himself lucky if he hadn't been noticed. If Keith had been the one to end up paralyzed...

He couldn't remember the last time he'd flirted with a girl. Hunk had tried taking him out once, but Lance had just stayed at the bar, drinking with his eyes closed, red flashing behind his eyelids. He'd gotten drunk enough to not remember coming home, and Hunk never talked about the incident or Keith again.

Lance's face had scarred. The worst was one that cracked down from his temple to his jaw. The others were more minor, maybe they'd go away in a few years. But that one on his left side was there to stay. It would always remind him what happened, what he’d done.

The day he got his cast of he decided to go talk to him. He needed closure. Even if that closure was seeing how he'd damaged Keith, Keith yelling at him, he needed it. Going around and around in his own head wasn't getting him anywhere. He had the option to spend the rest of his career at the Garrison haunted by this or at least try to make something of himself still, even if that something would be remaining a cargo pilot, if that. Hunk had agreed with him, though he was a bit more optimistic about his prospects. Hunk thought he could still make fighter class. Lance didn't know if he even wanted that anymore.

Hunk had agreed to come see him before he saw Keith. There was a buzz to request entrance to their quarters. Sometimes Hunk did this to give Lance a moment to make himself presentable if he knew he had been emotional, even though this was just as much Hunk's room as his own.

Lance pressed the button installed into his bedside table to open the doors.

He looked to the entryway, and got to his feet faster than he had in six months.

"Keith."

Keith looked extremely uncomfortable, eyes cast down and to the side, arms crossed over his chest like he was trying to keep something from getting out. They hadn't been face to face since they were both getting patched up in the emergency craft that had rescued them a week after they crash landed.

Keith had yelled at him at the beginning of that week, just after the crash, and the rest of it had been spent in tense silence by their crashed craft, sending signals that didn't seem to be getting received, or if they were, weren't precise enough for rescue. Lance wasn't much help due to the broken leg and a concussion.

Keith had taken care of them both. When they were approaching a week, and the hope of rescue had been whittled to a sliver, Keith grew more distant. At least before, the silence between them was intent, he could feel how very aware Keith was of his presence. Then his distance wasn't apathetic, it was almost defensive.

He thought Lance was going to die. Lance thought so too.

When rescue had come, Keith made sure Lance was tended to first. Lance was lifted into the rescue craft first, he was examined first, cared for first. Lance had overheard one of the medics on their way back to the Garrison say that if Keith had been given the antidotes to the foreign water he had been drinking  just a few hours later, he would have died. Lance hadn't been treated for poisoning. Keith had given him the water from the ship's preserves.

"Can I come in?"

Lance had never really felt before how small the Garrison's quarters were, especially shared between two people. He'd never felt how narrow it was, how low the ceilings were, until Keith stepped inside. Now he was aware of every item inside, how he wished he could push everything to the walls or out into the hall. Keith took up so much space, in Lance's mind.

"I heard you got your cast off today."

Keith was looking at his leg. Lance had never been self-conscious about his legs before. He was dressed in off-duty clothes and the form fitting black pants made him feel bare now.

"I did," Lance struggled to reply, voice sounding cracked and dry, though his eyes were stinging with the threat of tears. He couldn't look away from Keith. He was in his uniform. Lance never felt like he filled in his own uniform right. Even now as Keith stands in the pose of an insecurity he looks like more of an officer than Lance ever did.

Keith wanted to see Lance safe. From the moment he stepped onto the craft with him to now, that's all he'd wanted. He didn't want condolences from other officers, cadets wondering at how brave he was, how hard it must have been going through a survival situation with a inferior and injured officer. He didn't want the award of self-sacrifice and valor he had been offered. He didn't want to go to be checked by the medics _again_ for any lasting effects of the water. What he wanted was for Lance to get his stitches out, his scars healed, his cast off. He wanted Lance to stop hiding.

Keith's eyes slip up Lance's legs to his face. His eyes couldn't help but catch on that scar down the side. One could perfectly cradle his head and stroke down his cheek on the exact path that scar took. "Why did you take the job?"

Lance flinched. Keith recognized the movement. The expectation of damage, the confirmation of something one had already judged and sentenced oneself for. He took a step forward. Lance took a step back.

"You were unqualified. You weren't even fighter class. You barely passed your navigation tests. You're a cargo pilot. What were you doing signing up for a two man mission into uncharted space?"

Lance owed Keith answers. He owed him honesty. He owed him anything he could ask for and an apology on top of it. But he couldn't give him this. This answer wasn't a gift, it was a burden. He couldn't put more of his weight on Keith's shoulders. He'd already asked himself this question enough to know the answer, to know what it did to him. He didn't know what it would do to Keith.

Then a new question came to him. "Why did you accept me as your co-pilot?"

That made Keith look at him. Really look at him, not at what was on him.

"I wouldn't have been able to go if you hadn't signed an agreement to take me on. Did you not really look at the doc? Or did you really want someone who wouldn't get in your way?"

Keith's jaw flexed. Lance bit his lip, and he took his own step forward.

"I wanted to fly with you," Lance says in a hushed tone, his voice a deep treble. He hears Keith breathe. "Why did you save me like that? Do you really think you're that unworthy of life?"

"No," Keith answers. Lance can feel the fabric of his gloves against his skin, his voice under it. He can't tell where it's coming from. "I thought you were that worthy of it."

Lance's lips press against Keith's. Keith's fingers were already in his hair, they were already so close. Keith is dry and hot. Lance's cool hands raise chills on Keith's back. "That's why.”

"That's why," Keith echoes, eyes half-closed. Lance's are wide open. "You have more life in you than anyone in this place."

"You've lived more."

"Have I?"

Lance's hands under Keith's uniform. Keith's lips on his neck, his thumb tracing down his scar.

"Stop hiding," Keith says before he presses fully into him, kissing over the junction between his neck and shoulder. "Please."

"Please," Lance replies, his hands going into the base of Keith's hair as Keith's hand retreat to his chest, pushing him gently to the back wall.

"You don't have to ask."

Lance pulled on Keith's hair to get him to look up. He pressed his lips on his, breathed him in. Keith opens his mouth and Lance slips in. Their bodies fit, fire evaporating water, water quenching fire. Finally they're brought into equilibrium, balance in all things.

**Author's Note:**

> I take requests! By the same name on Tumblr, fandomghostwriter.tumblr.com


End file.
